The Government-Insurance Option Is Dead By Lawrence Kudlow
The day after President Obama's impassioned speech for big-government health care, Wall Street bet heavily that the so-called government-insurance option he supports is dead.
The day after President Obama's impassioned speech for big-government health care, Wall Street bet heavily that the so-called government-insurance option he supports is dead.
While the next slate of House elections does not occur until 2010, congressmen and their challengers certainly don't take off the "off-year." Instead, this year is a crucial one for the parties who must prove their recruiting chops, for the incumbents who seek big fundraising numbers and positive headlines, and for the challengers who have to prove their ability to take down a sitting member of Congress. And that doesn't even include the open races, 18 so far, where incumbents have announced they will not seek reelection. In those districts, both parties are scrambling to find candidates who can quash takeover hopes or, conversely, take advantage of this rare opportunity.
One of the (many) irritating things about being a Republican in the liberal Bay Area is the certainty that if there is a story out there that makes conservatives look stupid -- like the protests against President Obama's Tuesday speech to America's students -- then you know that wherever you go, folks are going to ask you about that particular flap.
The wild furor over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren raises many questions, but there is only one that really matters. How did America surrender its political discourse -- not to mention the news cycle -- to the most unreasonable and unstable elements of the far right?
The resignation over the Labor Day weekend of White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones tells you some interesting things about the Obama administration.
The gifted woman who headed my children's elementary school, Reveta Bowers, always said that teaching kids values was as important as teaching them skills.
"You Don't Know Jack" is the perfect title for the upcoming HBO biopic starring Al Pacino as Death Doc Jack Kevorkian -- because it is clear that many of Kevorkian's fawning interviewers don't know much about Jack.
As the politicians who support the president's health care plans escape back into Washington from America -- and as the politicians who oppose the president's health care plans leave their safe redoubt in the heartland and go once more behind the lines into the hostile territory of the Federal Triangle -- only one thing is certain: We don't know the end of this story.
America will soon mark the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The replays of burning buildings and piercing screams will bring back jagged memories of that horrific day.
"Very active." That's what White House aides say Barack Obama is going to be this month. That's probably an understatement.
As he campaigned for the presidency, Sen. Barack Obama argued that Afghanistan should become "the central front in the battle against terrorism." Obama has delivered on that issue.
The jobless-recovery theme re-emerged on Friday with the arrival of a disappointing employment report.
Many astounding details surround the story of the California rapist who kidnapped an 11-year-old and kept her captive for 18 years. None shocks more than the raw fact that Phillip Garrido was not locked up, the key lost.
Watching conservatives cheer the demise of the "public option" has left me shaking my head.
Before leaving for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Barack Obama said the next big item on his legislative agenda -- well, after health care and cap-and-trade and maybe labor's bill to effectively abolish secret ballots in union elections -- was immigration reform.
Believe it or not, sometimes good news on the economy can be bad news for stocks.
It's been a long and ugly weekend, e-mail wise. Ted Kennedy may be gone, but the haters are still out there. Every time I said a nice word, my BlackBerry would start vibrating.
"President George W. Bush kept us safe from further terrorist attacks." Few presidential claims have been less persuasive to the public than that. Yet after Sept. 11, most Americans thought, "It's not a question of whether, but when." We would have been grateful if we had known at the time that there would be no further attacks while Bush was president.
Since 1999, when he was placed under California parole supervision for a 1976 rape in Nevada, Phillip Garrido, 58, was subject to drug testing, required to wear a GPS device and subject to twice-monthly visits by his state parole officer.
Flip the calendar pages -- as they do in the old movies to show passage of time -- and stop at Nov. 2, 2010. That will be Election Day. How Congress handles health care reform will influence which party gets to party that night.